We have been following the story of Lee Callender over the last few months in his venture into self-employment. Now’s the time to catch up with Lee to see how the last few months have been for him.

Here is a summary of the story so far. As you’ll recall, Lee had been working in the recruitment industry before deciding to branch out into self-employment with the support of Chris Huntington, his Barclays Local Business Manager.

Working in the recruitment market with over seven years experience, Lee had always enjoyed his work and been very successful. Headhunted on several occasions and turning other people’s business fortunes around, Lee decided that if he could do this for others, he
must surely be able to do this for himself. He initially focussed where his experience lay – in the construction industry - but as there had been a downturn he decided to diversify
into catering and commercial recruitment to ensure that he capitalised on the bigger opportunities in the area. However, having expanded, Lee then found that he had spread
himself too thin and the business had become purely reactive – almost fire-fighting rather than planning ahead. He also hadn’t kept an eye on the finances and the numbers just weren’t stacking up, so Lee made a call to Chris to discuss what his exit strategies could be if the business didn’t pick up sufficiently.
So, having looked at all the options again he decided to re-focus his efforts on where the bigger opportunity was, in the catering sector. He started to phone and make appointments to see larger catering companies and hotels in nearby Newcastle city centre to see people
who could help him place his candidates there. Off the back of this came a great success – the placement of his first permanent candidates. This boosted income and served to bring the business back towards an even keel in terms of having enough money to pay the bills. Turnover seemed much healthier than earlier in the year. As Lee was now a few months into his business and things were picking up, he felt ready to launch his website. He’d already registered the name and a holding page had been placed, but he’d just not had the time to take it further. Following a conversation with Chris, he found out that he could get partial funding through a regional agency. This enabled him to develop the kind of site he
really wanted. Building upon his previous experience in the recruitment industry, Lee drew together a full list of what he wanted the site to do. This included immediate things like the ability to make changes to jobs they’d advertised, but also where he wanted to take it in the future - like he knew he wanted to be able to offer the service of uploading candidate CVs direct to clients. He also made sure that the site pages were designed with his customers in mind. For example, it was important that the construction and catering sides of the site were straightforward and easy to follow, whereas the commercial
side needed to be more pleasing to the eye. The added benefit for Lee was that by developing the site, he would be able to place more of the job roles online rather than in the newspapers which in the long term would save him money. Once the site had been built, but before it went live, Lee made the sensible move of getting some clients to test the usability of it. Lee said “I had got so close to the design and content of the website that it had became very personal – clients were able to see things on the
website that I couldn’t and made some great suggestions for improvements.”
From his initial marketing of vacancies in local and regional newspapers, he’d made good contacts which meant he was able to negotiate some great deals on advertising. Taking full page back covers in the job supplements served a dual purpose – not only did it
drive candidates to apply for job vacancies, but it also raised awareness of his business with clients and potential clients. Lee also made sure that his website address was placed prominently on all of the marketing so everyone knew where to go to get more
information. Once the press advertising grew, Lee received sales calls
encouraging him to advertise in other publications. In the excitement, Lee publicised everywhere he could. Following a progress meeting with Chris, Lee accepted that in hindsight he should have costed out